America is conservative in fundamental principles... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.

It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.

So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.

America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.

Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them.

People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.

Planned parenthood in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples attitudes which, on the political plane, have been causing the trend towards economic planning.

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.